Sunday, October 17, 2010

Weekend Wrap Up

1.The Palm Beach, FL mansion of disgraced Ponzi scheme putz Bernie Madoff, now serving a 150 year sentence in the clink for his financial malfeasance that destroyed the financial lives of hundreds, has finally been sold for $5,650,000. The 5 bedroom and 7.5 pooper property was put on the market for $8,490,000 in September of 2009 shortly after the property was seized by the Feds.

The Madoff's picked up their Palm Beach hideaway in the mid-1990s when they shelled out $3,800,000 of other people's money to buy the 8,753 square foot mansion.

Mister and Missus Madoff's ocean front spread in Montauk was sold in October of 2009 for $9,410,000 to real estate honcho Steven Roth, chairman of the Vornado Realty Trust which owns and manages major amounts of retail and office space around the country.

The Madoff's Manhattan doo-plex penthouse pad, first listed by the feds with an asking price of $9,900,000, was sold in early 2010 for $8,000,000 to toy tycoon Al Kahn and his wife Patsy whose fortune is built on the backs of Cabbage Patch and Pokemon dolls.

Your Mama isn't sure what's become of Bernie and Ruthie's condo in the gated Chateau des Pins community in the South of France, but we presume it too has been seized and sold off like the rest of their ill-gotten assets.

2.MukeshAmbani–India's wealthiest man and one of the richest people on earth–his wife Nita, their three children, and his mother Kokilaben have finally moved into their most unusual and monstrous new mansion in Mumbai, an asymmetric 570-foot tall tower that reportedly requires a staff of 600 to run smoothly. That's right butter bean, six hundred damn servants for six occupants. That's an utterly obscene 100 servants per person.

The 27-floor residence, which Mister Ambani named Antilia after a mythical island, is said to have 9 elevators, a number of glass fronted guest apartments with panoramic views over the slums of Mumbai towards the Indian Ocean, and a health complex with fitness and spa facilities, swimming pool, dance studio and yoga rooms. Other extravagances include a 50-seat theater, ballroom, and a 4-story hanging garden with several balconies and terraces located midway up the building.

The family's private quarters, located on the top four floors, sit just under the air traffic control center that services the three helicopter landing pads on the roof and the tower-mansion sits atop a six-story parking garage that holds 160+ cars and includes a private auto repair center for the Ambani's fleet of automobiles.

The 'Asian contemporary' interiors were reportedly done by an American firm and, not surprisingly, include glass and gold chandeliers in the ballroom.

Believe it or not, bunnies, the Ambani family upgraded from a converted 14-story apartment block that was, apparently and shockingly, not quite large enough for the six of them.

3.Earlier in the week Your Mama informed the children that house flipper/reality television star Jeff Lewis finally unloaded his personal residence in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles for $2,325,000. We've subsequently heard from the all-knowing Lucy Spillerguts who snitched to Your Mama that the buyer is a ladee executive at Disney.

Ms. Spilleruts also whispered in our ear that Mister Lewis and his dee-voonly smart-allecky housekeeper Zoila have decamped–or soon will–for a rental in West Hollywood last listed on the open market at $5,500 per month. According to listing information Your Mama managed to squeeze out of the interweb, the well maintained but very ordinary mock-Mediterranean has 3 bedrooms and 3 poopers including a master suite with walk-in closet and pooper with Jacuzzi tub and a shower built for two.

Now chickens, keep in mind that we can't verify Ms. Spillerguts scuttlebutt, but also keep in mind that the 411 we get from Ms. Spillerguts is dead on the money 99.999% of the time.

4.The Venice, CA compound of recently deceased actor/artist Dennis Hopper, heaved on the market in July (2010) with an asking price of $6,245,00, has recently received second of its two significant karate chops to the asking price, which now stands at $4,799,000. Most reports indicate the compound, with buildings by architects Brian Murphy and Frank Gehry and where several of his children and at least one of his many wives lives, needs to be sold in order to pay outstanding debts.

5.Professional baseball player Derek Jeter's 70th floor condo at the slender Trump World Tower–currently listed at $20,00,000–isn't high enough up in the air for a Saudi prince who opted to make an offer on a 4 bedroom and 5.5 pooper penthouse pad two floors up with an identical layout but listed with a much higher $34,500,000 price tag.

@Jimbo. You'd be surprised at the enormous savings that one can achieve just by switching to a store brand caviar and going from hand-appliquéd gold-leafed TP to Limited Edition Conspicuous Consumption Extra-strong Double-roll Silver-plated Charmin. With Aloe, natch.

Mr. Ambani is a one man economic stimulus program. Perhaps some of our oligarchs could follow his lead in terms of job creation. Think of all of the architects, construction workers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, interior designers, furniture builders, and on and on who were hired as a result of the phallic castle being built. Then there are 600 people with permanent jobs. You remember those, right? The things that Congress and Wall St. don't seem to feel us little people require in this "post-employment" age.

The architecture firm of Perkins+Will in Chicago, where every employee must have LEED certification and where “advocates of socially relevant design” create “buildings that honor the broader goals of society”, helped perpetrate this atrocity. So much for sustainability, Perkins+Will, you've just designed the most unsustainable residence on the planet (in a city where 65% of the residents live in tenements that also is home to the second largest slum in Asia).

Happy, Mr. Johnson (the firm’s lead designer)? I think not and suppose that is why we’re not allowed to make eye contact with you when walking down the corridor at P+W. To everyone else; good luck finding this “positive” project on the firm’s website. At least someone here had the sense to hide the house lest it be confused with the rest of the Perkins+Will envirobabble.

There's a long tradition of philanthropic building among the royalty of India (think Art Deco Palaces built as make work project for their subjects and Polish muralists and interior designers). I can't help thinking that something like that happened in Mumbai, though P&W has many Indian equals, if not betters.